THE Dublin city manager, Mr Frank Feely, is to retire on May 13th - his 65th birthday - after 17 years in office. The Local Appointments Commission has been requested to initiate the procedures to choose his successor.
Whoever succeeds him is certain not to serve as long. Under new rules, city or county managers as well as senior civil servants can only hold the same office for a maximum of seven years. Nonetheless, with an annual salary of £70,219, it will be one of the most important appointments of 1996.
Mr Feely joined Dublin Corporation as a clerk in 1949, straight from Synge Street CBS, and rose through the ranks, serving as minor staff officer, organisational methods officer, senior administrative officer, principal officer, and assistant city manager.
He had studied accountancy at night and became the corporation's finance officer before winning the top job as city manager and town clerk. At the time - indeed until 1994, when local government reorganisation divided Co Dublin among three new councils - he was county manager as well.
Mr Feely, the son of a Leitrim born garda, was born in Dublin and lives in Templeogue. His wife, Ita, is a former corporation employee and they have four grown-up children. He paints in his spare time and hangs a picture every summer in the People's Art exhibition on St Stephen's Green.
He became the public face of Dublin Corporation, looming large at functions around the city. He claims credit for the idea of holding the 1988 Dublin Millennium celebrations, as well as new city parks, pedestrian streets and the floodlighting of such landmarks as the Ha'penny Bridge.
Among those believed to be keenly interested in succeeding him is Mr Derek Brady, assistant city manager in charge of the planning and development departments. Like Mr Feely, he joined the corporation as a clerk straight after finishing school in Synge Street and has never worked anywhere else.
Another contender is likely to be Mr Owen Keegan, formerly an economist with Davy Kelleher and McCarthy, whose appointment in 1993 as assistant city manager in charge of the housing and environment departments caused some consternation in the traditionally closed local authority managerial system.
One of those most often mentioned as a likely successor is Mr, John Fitzgerald, who is currently the county manager of the Tallaght-based South Dublin County Council.
There is a widely-held view - even among senior officials in the Department of the Environment, which will appoint the interview board - that the next Dublin city manager should be an "outsider", i.e., drawn from outside the ranks of the corporation or, perhaps, even from the private sector.
Some of the "outsiders" include Mr Tom Coffey, chief executive of the Dublin City Centre Business Association; Ms Joan O'Connor, former president of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland; and Ms Laura Magahy, managing director of Temple Bar Properties.
